Florida 8th report - winter blues
 

Happy New Year! We haven't been out in the kayaks since October, and we haven't been out on the ocean in them since August. Conditions were great yesterday, so we were excited to get some miles in.

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We tried a new beach in Indian River Shores, and while the swells were only 2 ft, the break was kind of weird. Ally made it through a couple of gnarly waves, but I wasn't as lucky and got flipped back onto the beach. My rods survived, but my safety flag pole broke. I had to chase down a few water bottles bobbing in the surf. I got through on my second attempt. We trolled Rapalas along the inside edge of the reef in about 15 ft of water. Jacks and bluefish were biting.

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I told Ally I saw a lot of small marks over the reef, so she stopped to fish with a sabiki and caught an assortment of fish. Here's her with a pigfish.

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I continued trolling and added guaguanche and Atlantic sharpnose to my species count for the day. The sharpnose was foul hooked through its dorsal fin, and it actually fought pretty hard.

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Ally resumed trolling and added bluefish and Spanish mackerel to her count for the day.

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Twice I hooked up with two fish on the same lure. Both times it was a jack and a bluefish.

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We have some shark fishing coming next month, so we kept quite a few fish to use as shark bait. Jacks, bluefish, and cuda should all work well. We released as many fish as we caught.

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As usual, here's the Garmin screenshot. You can see the inner and outer edges of the reef. If you look on the left side of the screenshot, starting from the beach it goes: 15 ft sand trough, 10 ft reef, and then 20+ ft sand open ocean. I still laugh to myself when I see 22 ft on the screen and think "oh it's deep here!". I do miss deep dropping in CA.

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Miles: 10.55
Hours: 5:05
Water temp: 71 F

Hey Ben, Looks like it was a beautiful day and some fun action. Two doubleheaders on the same lure are awesome! As calm as it looks my buddy also flipped during an early morning Saturday launch out of Boca Raton. I think the short period between the waves and an unforeseen sand bar caught him by surprise. Of the 3 kayakers that went out, they were unable to make bait and had a horrible slow fishing day. I was going to go with them but abstained due to lingering COVID symptoms. Those Bluefish are good sized compared to the ones we typically catch farther Sth. Winter often drives them to Florida and we sometimes have runs off the piers and ICW. It looks like your well stocked up with bait for Shark fishing -- Nice.

Thanks John. Getting flipped and tossed back on the beach is certainly a check on one's ego. Hope your covid symptoms clear up soon!

If you're catching spanish mackerel are you eating them? I'm eager to see a cooking/tasting report. The ones in Baja (sierra) were splendid eating, even in the off season, so I'm eager for a tasting report of the Eastern ones. Weakies too.

Nice report
 

Thanks for sharing 👍

Finally feeling better, Going to hit it somewhere tomorrow.

She let both of the ones from this session go. They might have been keepers (12 inch fork length), but they were small. We've kept them before; they're tasty but not as good as snapper & grouper.

Agree. They can be fun to catch on light tackle, and there is a winter-wide open run of them off Stuart every year.

Thanks for the great pics. Love to see the beautiful FL coast. Miss fishing down at Pensacola for the big Reds.

I drove up to Pensacola for the offshore King of the Island tournament in 2019. The big Reds in the bay were still there thick. Many of us who had never taken a big Redfish got our first. That is a fun fishery.